Similar to the thread for Planet MoFo updates, I'll be claiming this thread as a central place to post announcements regarding my bzflag.allejo.io servers. For the first announcement, I have a few things I'd like to cover.

Introduction of "Family Friendly" servers

I have a rather lax policy when comes to the administration of my servers but with the introduction of "family friendly" servers, I'd like to reintroduce an environment that is friendly for the whole family to play on without being concerned about offensive topics or language. What does this mean? These servers will have language filters and will prevent any messages caught in the filter from being sent to any chat (public, team, or private); purposely bypassing the language filter will result in punitive action. So what language is allowed? As a general policy, if you don't want a preschooler repeating what you said at that one family party, then it's a good idea to keep it yourself.

The following servers are currently marked as "Family Friendly"

Missile Wars 2.3

Urban Jungle

Badgerking

Two Castles by Viper

Discussing politics and religion

It's strictly prohibited. Everyone will have a different opinion and I host servers for players to have fun, not to introduce another medium for you to vent your political or religious beliefs. If you'd like to discuss these things, you may do so only via PM provided both parties consent and it is not automatically filtered out. Any callsigns religious or political in nature are disallowed; you will be asked to change your callsign. Even if your callsign is registered on the forums, if it is political or religious in nature, it will not be allowed.

Saving scores

Lastly, something that's not related to policy or rules on my servers. Your scores will be saved for 2 minutes after you leave to allow you rejoin and change teams to keep CTF or FFA matches fair! This does not mean you will be able to idle in observer to save your score. You have 2 minutes since the time you leave a non-observer team.

Questions or concerns

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to post about it here (provided it doesn't cause this thread to be locked) or PM me directly. If you'd like to report bugs or issues on the servers, feel free to post about it here or PM me directly.

Thank you for flying with BZFlag!

Last edited by allejo on Wed Mar 29, 2017 8:04 am, edited 2 times in total.

Maybe (no maybe about it) I need thicker skin. But the family friendly aspect doesn't appear to be taking hold and/or even admins have been posting what I would consider questionable public msg's. I've learned my lesson and avoid mofo like it's a plague. In reality it is. What can be done to prevent peeps from carrying over their behavior that appears to be promoted on mofo, onto say urban? Within the last few weeks there's been some carry-over from mofo to urban it seems. Maybe this isn't the place to discuss this - admins feel free to delete my post.

DEFenseMAN wrote:Maybe (no maybe about it) I need thicker skin. But the family friendly aspect doesn't appear to be taking hold and/or even admins have been posting what I would consider questionable public msg's. I've learned my lesson and avoid mofo like it's a plague. In reality it is. What can be done to prevent peeps from carrying over their behavior that appears to be promoted on mofo, onto say urban? Within the last few weeks there's been some carry-over from mofo to urban it seems. Maybe this isn't the place to discuss this - admins feel free to delete my post.

Go ahead and shoot me a PM regarding the incident you're referring to and I'll be more than happy to investigate and get that cleared up

I liked alpha1's idea regarding several classifications so my family friendly servers will now contain '[FF]' in the server name for easy filtering and visibility. However, only my family friendly servers will be following this convention.

All my family friendly servers now require you to be registered in order to talk, following Urban Jungle's practice.

Announcement time! Due to abuse and misuse, the use of VPNs on all my servers will now be forbidden. I'm currently testing automatic blocks/bans on IPs coming from VPNs on a few of my servers and it'll be deployed to the rest of my servers in the coming days. If your IP is accidentally classified as a VPN, please send me a PM to get that sorted out.

There have been some concerns regarding my decision to disallow VPNs entirely (guess that means the plugin is working) so allow me to clarify some things. Common reasons for using VPNs on online gaming are to bypass geolocation restrictions on servers and protected one's privacy because online games often expose player IPs to other players.

There are currently no BZFlag servers that have geolocation restrictions. I also have no intention of introducing such silly restrictions.

BZFlag doesn't expose your IP address to other players, only the server itself (the program) and admins may know your IP address. If you're concerned about your privacy, play on trusted servers with trusted admins/staff.

Lastly, VPNs typically will not reduce latency. Only on very very rare occasions, would this happen.

If you have a reason where you must use a VPN to access the server, please notify me and we'll get that sorted out. Otherwise, my decision of disallowing VPNs entirely will stand for now; it's unfortunate that I've been forced to make this decision but it's become necessary.

I tried to lookup on Google (or other online search engine[s]) vpns should not be used for gaming and I got conflicting info from what you posted..

the closest possible match was the link from github.com that was titled Don't use VPN services. In short, and in my own words, suggesting using a VPN only for example for connecting from a not trusted network (Wi-Fi Hot Spot that you do not own) to another trusted network (to your work place or to your home).

..thank you for the clarifying that about why VPNs are blacklisted - as far as BZFlag is concerned.

My ISP will be performing some maintenance in the datacenter where my bzflag.allejo.io servers are located on July 12, 2017 from approximately 02:00 EST to 03:00 EST. There shouldn't be any downtime but there may be lag and packet loss spikes.

Tired of mines always blowing you up unexpectedly without a way of easily taking revenge? Say no more! There's a brand new flag currently in testing called "Bomb Defusal." What's it do? If you carry the flag over a mine's location, it'll defuse the mine and instead, detonate another mine at the original mine owner's location! Best part? The defuser will get points for any kills that occurred due to that new mine.

The new flag's still in testing so please /report any issues that you may find.

I've gotten reports of mines not triggering correctly or mine points being assigned to the wrong players. I have addressed both of these issues and things should be more reliable now. Please continue to /report any issues. This mine update and the new BD flag are only available on Urban Jungle still but will be expanded to other servers in due time.

Additionally, there are two new commands for you to use! Don't worry, mine locations are not revealed meaning you'll still be able to explode other tanks in secret.

- /minecount :: displays the current number of mines on the field
- /minestats :: displays the number of mines each player has on the field

sounds legit. while i personally liked the funky randomness effect, many people were just getting perplexed or over-possessive of their ex-mines. BD on clay hills for one would be a welcome addition. there seem to be a whole lot of useless flags there.

Because if I don't announce this publicly, I won't have anyone to hold me to it and this is something I really want to build. Having a server list of 120+ servers for only a handful of players has always been a topic of conversation and there have been ideas on how to fix this in the future. One idea that has been brought up is having maps spin up "on-demand" as players request them. So how will things work and what does it mean for you as a player/map maker?

What does this mean for the majority of bzflag.allejo.io maps?
If the map hasn't gotten mediocre activity, they will be shut down and added into this experiment or "proof of concept." Don't worry, classic maps such as Missile Wars 2 and Urban Jungle will remain as they are now; I'll be examining the activity of all the maps closely and only shut down the lesser active ones.

What does "on-demand" mean?
A map library will be available online and in-game through a slash command. You will click a button on a website or run a slash command on a server and bam, a new server will be spun up with the map of your choice.

How is this different from now?
The map that was spun up will be shut down after 48 hours of inactivity (this value is likely to change) but can be spun up again if you'd like to play on the map.

What does this mean for map makers?
The current process of having your map hosted is posting it on the forums and hope someone hosts it for you. Or reach out to a server host directly. Or become a server host yourself, which has its own hurdles. How will this system improve that process? Well, as you make your maps you'll upload it to the map library site and it'll be available to be spun up on its own server within minutes.

Will I get to be an admin on my own map?
It's highly unlikely that this'll be the case. You shouldn't be motivated to make maps just so you can be admin somewhere.

When can we expect this awesomeness to be released?
Well, it's still in the planning stage and I'll be putting all of this together in the coming weeks. I expect to have a beta version of all of this ready by mid-January, the latest.

I'm posting this announcement in this thread since it'll be a subproject of my own servers and it'll likely be hosted on the same machine in a jailed environment. What are your thoughts on this? Does it sound like something you'd be interested in using?

The features mentioned here would something I look forward too in regards to the being able to create a server on command.
I'm not so sure about other servers being removed as it might cause some confusion for players wondering where the maps went.
(An announcement on servers before this happens would be good, as some might not read the forums.)

-Zehra

Those who are critical of me, I'll likely be the same of them. ~ZehraThere's always something to remember and it's been a game I love. ~ZehraThe time spent is a time which can never be regained, so it's a time to enjoy. ~ZehraThe decisions we make are the ones we look forward too and the ones we regret. ~ZehraThere's a difference between knowing my name and knowing me, one shows respect to my name and the other is to who I am. ~Zehra

Downtime for all my servers is scheduled for Saturday, December 2nd 2017 from approximately 12:00AM-2:00AM PST. A good number of BZFlag servers will be affected so that's why I'm doing it at a time with less activity.

allejo,
I think these are all good developments you are putting in place.
Regarding the Nov.12th topic of 'on-demand' servers sounds like a positive situation for you and players. If you want to do it, I say go for it. 120 servers is much for our player activity, in my opinion.
Thank you for all you do. Good work.
-Indy

On occasion, Useless Mine and Bomb Defusal would grant points to the wrong players, this has been patched properly this time (hopefully). Updates will be pushed out automatically this coming weekend whenever the servers are empty so no downtime is planned.

Purple Panzer servers and the rest of bzflag.allejo.io servers have been restored.

Roconut has also been restored.

There were a lot of changes that were made behind the scenes during this maintenance session so there's a chance I might have broken something or forgotten to restore something. Please let me know if anything is broken or I missed something.